Day Twenty Five - Y is for...

Yellow - with a little help from photo shop!

The photo project is quickly drawing to a close and while I have dutifully completed my entry each day, I am not thinking that any of the entries are going to really put me in a photography hall of fame.  There is some creativity and thought to the process, but since I am using a phone camera for most of the shots, the execution is just OK.

Y is for yellow.  I decided that first thing this morning and was pretty clear in my mind what that needed to look like.  There is a courtyard outside the building that I work in, with a fair number of plants and flowers, including a yellow hibiscus that I have admired multiple times.

The photo that I took and you see here (in a somewhat enhanced state)  was lovely, but the yellow was pale at best, thanks to the fact that I waited until the late afternoon to snap my shot.  I considered pinch-hitting with another item, like a post-it note, but that bored ME, so I can't even imagine how you the reader might feel!

Fortunately, Microsoft Photo has a few settings that can be modified and manipulated, taking the pale yellow flower to something that looks like it grew up out of a nuclear reactor.  Too bad radioactive doesn't start with the letter Y!

Day Twenty Four - X is for...

An X-ceptionally challenging letter to capture!

Science and abbreviations.  That is what the letter X is all about, at least in my cursory review for options.  I really thought about and actually researched the letter for a bit of inspiration today, but there wasn't a lot to be had.

Things I could have done but refuse on principal include the representation of Christmas with X-Mas...that takes the whole point out the season!

X-Ray, thankfully I don't have a need for one of those right now. Xylophone, don't have one of those lying around. Then we get into Roman numerals and a lot of scientific sounding ingredients that I am pretty sure are mostly artificial and I have no idea what they really are...xanthide, for example.

I was starting to feel a little desperate by about 8 pm...I was at Farmers Market/The Grove for our company Christmas party and I knew that my options were getting slimmer by the moment.  I was scanning the area, looking for something to spark my creativity, when I saw a sign on the American Girl store, touting their American Girl experience.

I bring you the letter X, this is as good as it is going to get today!

Day Twenty Three - W is for...

The world wide web is a wonderful thing

The photo itself is a bit lacking in imagination, but the functionality is INCREDIBLE.  I would estimate that I look something up on either my computer or my phone an easy 4-5 times per day, sometimes even more!

It sounds cliche, but I really don't know how we made it without the instant gratification of a search engine at our fingertips.  I have a set of encyclopedias that David and I bought when we first got married - we might have busted them out a few times when Holly first started her school career, but I have to admit that the web served as a far greater resource for her from about 4th grade on.

It makes me wonder what amazing thing will exist in 20 years that we will all declare as hard to imagine living without.  That will admittedly be here faster than I might like to admit!

Day Twenty Two - V is for...

Pluto, our guest Vizsla for a few weeks

The Newton home for wayward dogs has taken on a new charge.  Pluto, a 4-year old Vizsla (and featured V photograph!) has been hanging out with the pack for a week, and will likely be here for another 2 weeks or so, while his owners take care of some things in New York.

Pluto is quite the pup and has fit in nicely with our pack.  His first day at the house would have been overwhelming for most - he first met Charlie and Doug on the front lawn, then went into the backyard to run around a bit with them, before Shaggy came charging out and Penny sort of just said hi.

Pluto played the perfect balance with the pack - not too aggressive, but not a complete pushover either - he held his own!  Pluto loaded up with everyone else to go on a walk the next morning, went to work during the day and by dinnertime it was as if he has been a part of the pack for years.

He is a sweet pup, we will be sorry to have to give him back - this is the fundamental reason why fostering does not work for us, we always want to keep all of the nice dogs that come to stay with us!

Day Twenty One - U is for...

A glimpse at the Underwater world, courtesy of my Camelbak

U was a bit elusive, at least in the ideation phase. I landed on the whole underwater thing, which I thought would be pretty cool, but without an actual underwater camera or an aquarium or other way to catch a glimpse of the blurry world underwater, I was a bit stuck.

I typically have a water bottle around, and realized that the color of the bottle, combined with the water and the light made for a different look and angle on the underwater concept.

Now that I see it here, it is in my opinion a little blurred, not too unlike how things look when I am swimming without goggles!

Day Twenty - T is for...

A customized TREE. handmade by my new friend Carter

I spent the first half of today helping to watch a group of kids, ranging in age from 4 to 8 years old at the "Drop and Shop" event held at church.  The idea is the parents drop their kids off for about 4 hours, giving the parents the freedom to Christmas shop, decorate, or just enjoy a little time away from the little ones.

When I saw the message go out looking for volunteers, I thought that it would be a lot of fun to play with a group of kids for a few hours and give their parents a morning off, given it has been a long time since I have had to worry about looking after someone under 10 years old!

I will have to admit that the task itself was far more challenging than I originally thought it would be (not helping was the fact that I was coming down with a cold), and I was pretty wiped out by the time 2:15 rolled around and the last kid was picked up.  I did, however, have a nice keepsake in the form of a tree ornament that one of the boys made for me.  After he completed the ornament, he asked me how to spell my name, then wrote it on the back and signed it, "from your friend Carter".

There was no guesswork about what my T entry would be for the day, after all, it was customized just for me!

Day Nineteen - S is for...

Scrumptious Squash serves it up

Today is a good example of creative inspiration taking over the best laid plans.  I had already snapped a picture of the salad I ate for lunch (a Greek salad, not too surprising, is it?) but then I cooked up a batch of butternut squash for some quesadillas at dinner and was struck with the wonderful color, texture and smell that was before me, spurring this extreme close up shot of all things squash.

The quesadillas, by the way, were DELICIOUS.  Without a doubt the best that I have made to date.  Handmade flour tortillas with a healthy portion of freshly cooked and smashed squash, topped with Swiss, goat and Parmesan cheeses, plus a sprinkling of fresh chopped sage.

You will have to ask me to make these for you sometime, they will blow your mind!

Day Eighteen - R is for...

RED palm trees...you don't see that every day!

As I was pondering my entry for the letter R, the color red came to mind right away, and then I fixated.  We did the color red last year in the other 30 Days of Photos exercise and I recall being very proud of my avante garde interpretation of my car's tail lights.

Not one to duplicate, I started to look around for options.  An apple...did that for the letter A.  A stop sign...did that for close-up last year.  It is kind of dreary and rainy outside today, so the outdoor shots don't hold a lot of appeal...

Ah, the In-N-Out plastic cup.  Put a red folder behind it, get super close and let the magic happen from there.  It's really righteous, don't you think?

Day Seventeen - Q is for...

Quirky - but always cute and entertaining

I have joined the Sadie Kitten bandwagon and chose to represent the letter Q as a descriptor for our favorite cat - she is (like a good many of us) quirky.

You might notices that Sadie is photographed here with her eyes closed - in a box touting DOG FOOD - and still manages to look above it all.  She could easily be described as quintessentially quirky in the cat world.

Look at that, I squeezed in another Q word!  We have represented the letter well, thanks of course to the charms of Miss Sadie Kitten herself.

Day Sixteen - P is for...

Popchips - how I love thee!

Food features two days in a row!  It would seem that using the lunch hour to create my blog is swaying how I think about the different photo ops!

To my credit, I actually thought of this idea in the morning when I was packing my lunch.  The intention was to pour out all of the chips and get a close up of the pile, au natural.  A very good idea, indeed.

What actually happened at lunch time was I ripped open the bag and wolfed down the 16-chip portion in about 3 minutes, licking the residual thai sweet chili seasoning off of my fingers and tossing the bag into the trash.

It wasn't until almost an hour later that I realized I had not yet taken the photo for the day AND I ate the target subject!  Sheepishly, I fished the bag from the trashcan and did my best to angle it in some flattering light.

The crinkled bag just wasn't working with me today.  Time to step up my photo game and perhaps bust out the fancy camera...these rookie shots may be entertaining to speak of, but they certainly don't create a dramatic, artistic effect...because of course, that is what I am going for!

Day Fifteen - O is for...

Olives, it would seem, are not very photogenic

I will confess to taking the O photo in a hurry and with little more thought than the first thing that came to mind when I considered my options.

Olives are indeed a staple in my diet - not that I am Mediterranean or have any real ties to the cuisine, other than I just enjoy it.  When we went to Turkey and Greece, I ate a Greek salad for something like 10 consecutive days and of course the olive is an important part of that recipe.

The olives here look a little worse for the wear.  I use them in salads at work, so there was at one point 2 or 3 jars going at the same time that I consolidated into 1, draining out some of the brine and in that, it appears I have not preserved the fine look of the mighty olive.

While I offer some apologies for my not so great photo in this assignment, I do not apologize for my love of the olive and therefore my desire to make it the star of the day today.

Day Fourteen - N is for...

A night-lit nativity is nice!

I enjoy today's photo for two reasons - it is a beautifully hand-crafted nativity scene AND the photo was taken at night, really allowing the simplicity of the design, color and lighting to shine through.

The original plan was a night picture - there are already a lot of amply decorated houses with all kinds of colored lights and the occasional inflatable.

We were on our way to Life Group in the evening and I was just remarking that I planned to take an evening shot on our way out, when we walked up the pathway and saw this nativity scene.

That was quite the gift, as far as I was concerned and I wasn't going to pass it up, so as soon as we put the casserole dish and our books down, I was back outside snapping a picture and emailing it to myself.  We might have sounded like we were blathering on a bit, trying to explain to the hosts what we were doing and why, but the finished product is exactly what I was going for...N has been represented nicely!

Day Thirteen - M is for...

No money madness this weekend!

Lots of good M opportunities today, as we spent the first half of the day painting Christmas panels for use in the Worship Arts and then another 7 or 8 hours helping some friends put up their Christmas decorations, including a cool Christmas village.

For some reason (and a lack of attention is probably the leading cause here), I missed those big chances and landed instead on some greenbacks from my wallet to represent M in the form of MONEY.  

Had I done any of the crazy super sale shopping, this might have been more applicable, but I stayed safely away from the malls and big box retailers - my only real shopping plan for the whole weekend is going to be the Farmers Market on Sunday.

Perhaps the absence of spending is what kept the bills in my wallet and accessible to represent the mighty M!

Day Twelve - L is for...

I can't resist the lure of bright lights!

It is interesting as this project progresses, I find myself waking up each day, wondering what I am going to do for the corresponding letter.  Some days it is very easy and I have a plan, others I find myself looking for some creative inspiration at the very last minute.

Welcome to the very last minute.

Friday turned into a very busy and full administrative workday, with 7 1/2 hours logged at the local Starbucks working on the computer.  Only 1 latte was consumed during that time, so I feel like I got the good end of that deal.

After working all day, Ebe and I decided to see a late (10:05 pm) movie and had both heard that Flight was on the must-see list, so we took advantage of some free passes, short lines and low demand for a movie that had been out for a while.

I realized as we were going into the theater that it was going to technically be Saturday when we came out, so the flashy lights were the winner for L, as they caught my eye and therefore, my fancy.

I am not sure that the same can be said for the movie.  Well-acted, but kind of disturbing, in my mind.  If that was the intention, then I will say that it was well done!

Day Eleven - K is for...

Kind of like a Kaleidoscope, right?

Thanksgiving Day proved to be a little more challenging creatively than I thought that it might for the K entry!

It was getting late in the day when I looked out on the patio at my parents house to see the white lights on and looking very lovely.  They reflected in the sliding glass window and reminded me a bit of a kaleidoscope, so I trotted outside and stood up on a chair to take a close-up picture.

Fail is the only way to describe the output, so then I went on a hunt through the house to duplicate the effect with some other lights.  I found a lamp in the living room with some decorative holes on the top, and...success, at least in my mind!

Happy Thanksgiving.  I am thankful for so many different things, including the opportunity to blog about whatever I want to, including pictures of things that represent letters of the alphabet!

Day Ten - J is for...

It's the tiniest JUNIOR meal in the whole world!

Wednesday was a busy little day, given it was the day before Thanksgiving and I had a full day of work to cram into a 6 hour timeline.

It wasn't until I got to dinner (at about 9:45 pm, after the GREAT interfaith service at church) that I received what I would call inspiration for my J entry today.

Chipotle offers kid meals and since I knew that I would not be eating any lunch leftovers because of Thanksgiving weekend (we all know that we have expanded from a single day of eating to a whole 4-day weekend), it made sense to me to get the smaller meal so that I didn't waste any food OR consume too many calories (relative to what loomed for the weekend).

I got a quesadilla, which is in that little foil packet, but the miniature bag of chips was what really caught my eye in the whole process (it held 5 chips, in case you were wondering).  I guess that this could be considered some brilliant marketing, as the kids get the same experience as a full size meal, but it seemed a little wasteful to me to have a bag that small, even if it is intended for the junior crowd.

I will say that I was glad to have been with Ebe, who got the full sized bag of chips.  5 just wasn't going to cut it for me, especially with that itty bitty quesadilla!

Day Nine - I is for...

The Irony of today's entry is not to be overlooked

I am not a fan of IHop.  In fact, I can safely say that I am rarely ever a customer and I don't think that I have set foot in one for 10 or 15 years.

That context is important to realize on this, the day of I in our project.  I had not settled on a good I image and was walking along Victoria Road in Ventura (I had jury duty today) during the 90 minutes they gave us for lunch.

There are a lot more businesses and strip malls along that stretch of road than when David and I lived there 25 years ago.  I was looking at all of the different signs, trying to figure out what was going to hit the mark for I.

There it was, on the side of the road, just a block or two down from AAA.  IHop.  The restaurant that refused to make substitutions for me on two different occasions to accommodate the deletion of some meat that I requested.  Nope, would not do it.  At all.  No negotiating, not even if I paid extra.

I suppose that all these years later I might actually try an IHop - I am a big fan of pancakes, after all - but at this point it is so ingrained in my mind that I am not sure I would actually be able to enjoy it.

Inflexible could also be applied to today's entry - for both the IHop organization and myself!

Day Eight - H is for...

My favorite H

I knew as soon as we cycled to H what my entry would be...Holly, of course!

Unfortunately, our schedules were not synched up too well, so I had to wait for her to get home from school (she has all late classes and some days is not home until after 10 pm) and then snap an action shot.

Props to the Schnoogs for playing along.  I don't think that I even got out of the chair.  I just said to her, "I need to take your picture." I pushed the camera (phone) in her phase and snapped.

She is a good sport like that!

Day Seven - G is for...

Good grief and gross were my two initial reactions

David and Holly definitely live life in their own way, and every now and again I find something that just makes me scratch my head and wonder what the heck they do when I am not around.

Sunday night afforded another opportunity to wonder what was going on.  No one was home when I walked in the door, so I decided to do a few chores while I waited for everyone to show up.

I looked on the clean side of the sink and saw this perplexing scenario - a bowl of something cream colored in a bowl with cold water, sitting next to a clean plate in the drainer.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what the heck was sitting in the sink!  To figure it out, I had to back my way into things...the panini press was still out and it was Sunday...Holly must have made bacon on the panini press for breakfast on Saturday (I saw her posting on Facebook) and saved the grease for David to feed to the dogs.  I suspect that he started to warm it up for the pups morning dry food, but forgot about it.

When David and the dogs arrived home, I casually asked what was in the bowl...yep...I was right.  I didn't let on that the mystery substance made it to the G is for GROSS entry, I don't think that David or Holly would have understood why!

Day Six - F is for...

Finished Feet - feeling refreshed after a little rest

Saturday is typically a busy day in the life of the Newton clan, with this week being no exception.

On deck in the events department was the Fishbowl 1/2 Marathon, a nice little regional event held in Fountain Valley, benefiting a group called Students Helping Other Students (SHOS).

The weather was perfect (it looked a little threatening around mile number 9, but it stayed clear), the course was easy, the volunteers friendly and we finished without incident, all good news!

There were many F photo opportunities - Fishbowl, fitness, fun, finish and of course, the things that got me through the 13.1 miles - feet!  The feet pictured here are actually 'day after' feet, because my phone battery died at about mile 11 and I didn't take a picture of them as we crossed the finish line.  The balance of the day was spent eating (pizza and garlic knots, yum!), running errands and (as sheepish as I am to admit this), sleeping from about 8:30 pm on.

I guess that it has been a little while since I have done a 1/2 marathon, so in some ways, F can also stand for fatigued, as I was uncharacteristically exhausted!